December 16, 2011

... In 2002, the ACLU of Massachusetts filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) for removing subway ads promoting the views of a local church and refusing to sell additional advertising space to the church. One of the controversial ads, paid for by The Church of the Good News, said that early Christians did not celebrate Christmas or "believe in lies about Santa Claus, flying reindeer, elves and drunken parties."

The ACLU argued that the MBTA cannot refuse advertising space to groups it disagrees with.

Andy, did you notice the ACLU brought the suit on behalf of a Christian group that wants to assert its free speech rights?

Yes, I think the MBTA is taking the interests of mainstream Christianity against a fringe group trying to cause problems. That the fringe group is also nominally Christian does not interfere with why mainstream Christianity would get upset about people noting the fabled basis of their religion.

St. Paul anticipated you Andy 1 Cor 1:23"But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishnes"

The belief in God is foundational axiom whether accepted or rejected. Christians are quite aware that it seems absurd to the unbeliever. Many of us did not believe or had doubts in the past and may have even mocked the faith. I did.

Christians rarely get "freaked out", especially over something so trivial as Santa Claus. Cite an mainstream example. It's Muslims that flip out over the smallest slight. Further it's atheists who are so intolerant of Christians that they protest every public nativity or religious symbol or minor religious expression in school. That's because Atheism is as dogmatic and as unsupported as religion. The difference is that religion expressly understands that a leap of faith is made unsupported by the evidence of the senses. The obdurate rejection of the possibility of God is irrational. God's presence can neither be proved nor falsified. It's like Godel's theorem that any complete and perfect mathematical system has one unprovable theorem. So agnosticism is the correct place for the honest seeker of truth who does not believe. The possibility of God is acknowledged but not embraced and under that philosophy respect for those that believe is possible.

Andy R. said... Yes, I think the MBTA is taking the interests of mainstream Christianity against a fringe group trying to cause problems. That the fringe group is also nominally Christian does not interfere with why mainstream Christianity would get upset about people noting the fabled basis of their religion.

Actually, the battle was between "old school" religion against the secularized version of X-Mas you see allowed in the public square, with the ACLU defending the old school church's rights.

But the issue wasn't about establishment. It was about sensorship of ideas in advertising by a public authority.

Again, note, it wasn't a case of disparagement of a religion, which you can sensor as hurtful and offensive to some.

Rather, it was at most a disparagement of the secularization of the holiday.

It will be interesting to see all of the ACLU's 12 days. The complaint I hear is not so much that the ACLU is anti-religion as they are anti Christianity. In their first three days they have supported a fringe form of Christianity, a Native American religion, and Islam. So far nothing to dispel the anti-Christian stereotype.